The Aftermath
Previous Chapter ***** November 13, 2017 They found me at the far end of The Forest, wandering aimlessly along the border of Allister Park and the suburban block behind it. Some nice lady out in her backyard with her dog was nearly given a heart attack by the shocking sight of a bedraggled girl, bleeding and scraped and crying, covered in dirt and spilled soda and powdered concrete, stumbling around on the other side of the fence. I woke up the next morning on a cot in a tiny white room. For a few blissful seconds, I basked in the afterglow of the best sleep of my life. Then the events of the previous night crashed through the warm fog and I started to scream. I was in a psychiatric hospital, somewhere in Silverlake, with a “way” and a “serene” in the name. The hold was for 72 hours, but they kept me there five days. It took awhile for my body to re-acclimate to medication. The doctors and nurses were kind. They helped me wade through the swampy mess of truth and hallucination and, by the time I spoke to the police on the sixth day, I was well enough in touch with reality to be adequately terrified of what was waiting for me outside the hospital walls. But the detectives were understanding. They told me, as gently as possible, that Luke Andersen was dead. He’d bled out from two subdural hematomas: one from my blow with the shovel, the second incurred when his head slammed into the ground. There was a nine-inch hunting knife beside him: his fingerprints on the handle, my blood smeared on the blade. I told them he’d attacked me; they’d already come to the same conclusion themselves. There was a whole lot more. Luke Andersen, before he’d met his unfortunate end, had been digging a significantly large hole. Nestled in the dirt, the investigators found child-sized bones - a right arm, hand, fingers - and, though tests were still being run, they suspected the gruesome discovery was a piece of the late Micah Wall. A day later, their suspicions were confirmed. The cops, then, shut down the rest of the park. They’d looked for Micah in The Forest fifteen years before. But the thick carpet of acorns and leaves and densely-packed trees complicated the search, and they’d been looking for much bigger holes. Now, though, they were better informed. Micah’s murderer had buried him in pieces. I told them everything I knew. Luke’s forceful nature, Tommy’s suicide, the rooftop access to Atomic Videos. They spoke with Alicia and my parents, who’d flown in from Paris on the red-eye. The fifteen-year-old mystery was, tentatively, put to rest. Luke hadn’t played in Colonel Lewis’s yard with Tommy and me. He’d gone straight from Math Field Day practice to Allister Park on that fateful Saturday; there, he’d texted Micah Wall, and the two boys met outside the little gate at the south end of he park. They walked deep into the trees, where Luke murdered Micah then dismembered him. Then he texted Tommy and me to meet him in the park to play hide-and-seek, to give himself an alibi. While we were seeking, he was hiding pieces of Micah. His plan fell apart, though, when Tommy and I caught him burying the last piece under what we called The Daemon Tree. So he’d lied to us, told us a monster killed Micah, insisted on it until we believed him. Luke, needing someone to pin his crime on, snuck through the crawlspace above Atomic Videos late at night, utilizing the roof entrance he and Tommy and I had discovered months earlier, when we’d snuck into the Adults Only section. He left Micah’s red sweater and inhaler. I was medicated. Tommy was terrified into silence. Kevin Gideon was blamed for Micah’s death, and the whole thing was buried. As for motive - well, motive was hard to discern. Luke was posthumously diagnosed as a sociopath, of course. He’d been upset at Micah for ratting him out to his teacher, getting him suspended, muddying his perfect academic record. He’d had a crush on me, and thought my friendship with Micah was getting in the way. Finally, his anger, his resentment, his genius IQ and his lack of a conscience came together in a horrifying display of premeditated violence. The conclusion I’d come to was equally senseless, and even more unsatisfying. I remembered the look in Luke’s eyes as he’d come at me with he knife, the orange glow of pure murderous hate. I remembered how he didn’t even flinch as he forced me against the tree trunk and put a knife to my throat - 12 hours after flirting with me at Starbucks. He felt no remorse, sure. But it was more than that. I remembered his true crime novels, the stories he’d tell us about serial killers, his early interest in psychology. The FBI internship. His mother, empty-eyed and slack-jawed, cultivating bed sores with a tube through her neck. Luke, brilliant and betrayed, was unsatisfied with the childish silent treatment we’d imposed on Micah. He wanted more. Luke wanted to see if he could get away with murder. For a decade and a half, he had. ***** I couldn’t stay in the little house on Briar Rose Drive. My parents rented a hotel suite in Burbank; August came, and I moved into my studio apartment. A month later, I started work at Bayside Montessori. My new superiors were extremely understanding of my situation, reassured me that they didn’t think I was crazy, expressed sympathy at the trauma I had suffered, and insisted that, if I was having a bad day or needed to be accommodated in any way, they were more than willing. I’d expected more nightmares. The bright-red bulk of the Great Bagwurm, the swarm of Droxies, the AntWalkers and their suction and their subhuman muttering, and the crawling, decomposing re-animation of Kevin Gideon provided more than sufficient fuel for terror. And then, there was Luke. Luke, my best friend, the co-star of my shiny, sun kissed childhood adventures. Luke, who made me feel calm and protected like no one else could. The memory of his hands running over my body, the lingering taste of his tongue in my mouth. Luke, the boy who’d murdered Micah. He must have figured out I was schizophrenic before I did, then used my propensity for magical thinking against me when Tommy and I caught him. Luke, the man I’d killed. The mental task of reconciling all these incarnations of Luke Andersen was more horrifying than any fantastical bogeyman. But the nightmares didn’t come. I stopped lucid-dreaming altogether. And I think I know why - I’d completed the quest. I’d found Micah. And I’d slain The Daemon. I keep my old journal in a drawer. After I was released from the hospital I’d paged through it with trembling hands, searching for Mathilde’s last message. I found it. But it only corroborated how delusional I’d become towards the end, because the handwriting is obviously mine. And, for all his lies and manipulation and sociopathy, Luke had been right about one thing. I found a picture of Mathilde - the real Mathilde Koperski. Andy, probably inspired by my Facebook message, posted a ton of old childhood photos. Mathilde had long blonde hair and she did wear a lot of pink, but her face was different from the face that invaded my dreams. Her cheeks were chubbier, and her eyes were deeper-set and closer together. I then looked through some of my parents’ old pictures - Micah, Tommy, Luke and me, messing around in my backyard. The face I’d attached to the Mathilde of my dreams was my own. I’d had blue eyes as a kid that darkened to hazel. I’d had freckles. The Mathilde who’d given me rhyming clues, guided me, and, in the end, saved my life was a little piece of my imagination, a clever avatar of my subconscious dispatched to my waking, disordered mind. I miss her, a little. I’d have liked to have dreamed about her again. If only to thank her. ***** I’m typing this at my desk. I’m procrastinating - I should be grading the stack of multiplication worksheets stacked at my elbow. My life has been amazing since I left the Briar Rose house. I have my own place, great friends and, at my psychiatrist’s suggestion, I’ve been eating healthier and working out. I’ve never looked or felt better. I’m registered to take the GRE in March of next year. I think I’m going to write a book based on The Quest of the Four Grand Adventurers, maybe middle school reading level. It seems like a waste to have all these stories in my head and do nothing with them. And, while I’m definitely not going off my medication again, there are times when reality just doesn’t measure up to the contents of my head. For those seven days - June 5th to 11th, 2017 - I was a fantasy heroine. I outwitted dark creatures, scaled walls, mixed potions, and saved myself from a monster all too human. Adulthood can’t quite compete with childhood fantasy. But I guess I’ll have to make do with the memories. ***** Final Chapter *****